The Pentagon’s concept of “the next great American base” is significantly different from how military installations were once built, a senior defense official said Tuesday.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the project last month and said the nation’s governors would be able to pitch their state as a home for 15,000 to 25,000 military personnel.
Rather than erecting random buildings on a plot of land and expecting military units to adapt to their surroundings, the mission will drive the construction effort, the defense official said during a discussion with the Washington-based Defense Writers Group.
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“This is not military construction. This is not the way we have ever built anything before,” the Pentagon official told The Washington Times. “The design of a new base from the ground up allows us to purpose-build it as a capability — as a weapon system.”
The base will be expected to provide its own power apart from the local grid and be able to defend itself against threats like drone attacks.
“It’s all baked into the very nature of the design,” the defense official said. “It’s going to be really interesting to see what concepts they want to bring to us and where we go from there.”
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